»Trump grabs midterm spotlight29/07/18 07:30 from Saved Stories – 1. TrumpHe may not be on the ballot in November, but with 100 days to go before the midterms, the critical race for control of Congress has become all about President Trump Donald John Trump Giuliani targets …

Charles II who is believed to have suffered from two inherited disorders which prevented him from fathering an heir. This resulted in the end of the Hapsburg dynasty

The Hapsburg dynasty, one of the most influential and celebrated in Europe was driven to extinction because of inbreeding, say researchers.

The kings who ruled Spain and its empire from 1516 for almost 200 years during the most glorious period in its history frequently married close relatives such as nieces and first cousins. This in turn led to ill health and a high rate of infant and child mortality.

The first scientific evidence for the significance of inter-marriage in this major European family shows that down the generations successors to the throne were much more likely to receive copies of two identical ‘homozygous’ genes, one from each parent.

Mothers and fathers who share their ancestry make their offspring more vulnerable to birth defects and harmful DNA mutations.

By the time King Charles II died in 1700 without any children from his two marriages, the male line of the Spanish branch of the family, which produced rulers in Austria, Hungary and the Netherlands, died out.

His failure to produce an heir, despite having married twice, sparked the War of the Spanish Succession between 1701 and 1714.

During that period several European powers, including Great Britain, combined to stop a possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under a single Bourbon monarch, upsetting the European balance of power.

Monarchs tried to consolidate their power by intermarrying and Charles II was the son of Philip IV by his second marriage with Maria, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III, his niece.

The study shows that he was the offspring of a marriage almost as genetically inbred as a relationship between a parent and child or brother and sister.

Nicknamed El Hechizado (‘The Hexed’) because people at the time thought Charles II’s disabilities were down to witchcraft, it is believed he suffered from at least two inherited disorders.

One was a hormone deficiency and the other a kidney malfunction which could explain his impotence and infertility which led to the extinction of the dynasty.

He was born on the 11th of November 1661, and was the only surviving son of his father’s two marriages – a child of old age and disease, in whom the constant intermarriages of the Habsburgs had developed the family type to deformity.

Study leader Professor Gonzalo Alvarez, of the University of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, said: ‘He was unable to speak until the age of four, and could not walk until the age of eight.

Charles II’s father King Philip IV, left, with the ‘Hapsburg jaw’ and, right, his mother Maria Anna. King Philip was her uncle

‘He was short, weak and quite lean and thin. He first marries at 18 and later at 29, leaving no descendency.

‘His first wife talks of his premature ejaculation, while his second spouse complains about his impotency. He looked like an old person when he was only 30 years old, suffering from edemas on his feet, legs, abdomen and face.

‘During the last years of his life he barely can stand up, and suffers from hallucinations and convulsive episodes. His health worsens until his premature death when he was 39, after an episode of fever, abdominal pain, hard breathing and coma.’

The cosanguineous marriages also contributed to the development of the ‘Hapsburg jaw’ which featured in paintings by Titian and Velazaquez. This disfiguring condition is where the lower jaw grows faster than upper jaw.

As well as having this trait, Charles II’s tongue was so big he had difficulty speaking and drooled.

The research, published in the journal PLoS ONE, examined the genealogical information of more than 3,000 members of the Spanish Habsburg family over 16 generations.

They found nine of the 11 marriages within the Habsburg dynasty over 200 years were between biological relatives including two uncle-niece marriages.

Furthermore, despite their power and wealth the study found there was also a high rate of infant and child mortality in the Hapsburg families.

Only half of the children born in the dynasty during the years examined survived to age one, compared to about 80 per cent in Spanish villages of the time.

New documents filed in court by Paul Manafort’s lawyers appear to contradict his legal team’s own claims that the former Trump campaign chairman’s team only lobbied on behalf of the Ukrainian government in Europe.

The revelation could be important as Manafort is trying to fend off charges from special counsel Robert Mueller that Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent in connection with his lobbying work for the Ukrainian government. Earlier this year, Mueller accused Manafort and his former deputy, Rick Gates, of secretly organizing a group of former European politicians known as the “Hapsburg group” to lobby in the U.S. for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party.

But, according to prosecutors, Manafort and his longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, pressed those involved in the lobbying campaign to stress that the effort was focused exclusively on the European Union. A federal judge later ruled that Manafort was attempting to tamper with the testimony of potential witnesses and ordered him jailed over the incident.

Thursday’s documents — filed as part of a motion in court seeking to withhold more than 50 pieces of evidence from the jury in the upcoming trial — could complicate the EU-focused narrative. Several exhibits included in the court filing seem to contradict Kilimnik’s assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington.

“The Hapsburg team will also do a series of events between March and May in Washington DC designed to change the public rhetoric directed at Ukraine, but to also influence key members of the US Government through private meetings held at the highest levels,” Manafort wrote to Yanukvych in a memo dated Feb. 21, 2013. “This will include major speeches, participation in key events, and private meetings with senior US officials including Secretary of State John Kerry, and other members of the Administration.”

A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment.

The memo isn’t the first evidence that the Hapsburg group — which included a former Austrian chancellor and a former Italian prime minister — lobbied in the U.S. Manafort wrote in another memo made public by Mueller’s team last month that he had “organized and leveraged” the visits of two Hapsburg group members to Washington. And disclosure reports retroactively filed by two Washington lobbying firms show that members of the Hapsburg group met with lawmakers in Washington around the same time.

Manafort is not set to face trial on his lobbying-related charges until September. However, he will face trial next week on separate Mueller charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

The documents filed by Manafort’s lawyers on Thursday comprise hundreds of pages and offer the most detailed look yet into the lobbying campaign he orchestrated in Europe and Washington.

In a memo to Yanukovych dated Feb. 4, 2013, Manafort wrote that John Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state “is a positive development for us and will be a dramatic change from former Secretary Clinton.”

The Feb. 4 memo isn’t the only one in which Manafort appeared wary of Hillary Clinton, who had stepped down as secretary of state days earlier.

“It is important to understand that holdovers from the Clinton days and the US Embassy in Kyiv are not objective and are conspiring to identify options to get sanctions as a tool to pressure the Yanukovich Government,” Manafort wrote in another memo to Yanukovych.

Manafort also described Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the Europe, Eurasia and emerging threats subcommittee, as good for Ukraine.

Manafort was more pessimistic about Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the new chairman of another subcommittee, suggesting that he’d use his position to raise the issue of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister and Yanukovych’s political rival. Yanukovych’s government imprisoned Tymoshenko on what were widely condemned at the time as politically-motivated charges.

“It is highly likely that Smith uses this subcommittee as a vehicle to hold hearings on [Tymoshenko’s] situation and possibly promote legislation,” the memo reads.

Smith had previously introduced a bill to encourage free and fair Ukrainian elections. Lobbyists hired by Manafort and Gates had lobbied against bills in 2012 condemning Yanukovych’s imprisonment of Tymoshenko.

The lobbyists Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group and Vin Weber of Mercury and the consultant Tad Devine have all confirmed that they worked with Manafort and Gates. But Jackson, a former chief of staff to one-time House Speaker John Boehner, has not been tied to Manafort.

Jackson said he had no idea why his name was there.

“I have done no work with or for Paul Manafort nor on behalf of the Yanukovych regime and know of no reason why my name shows up in a document,” Jackson wrote in an email to POLITICO on Thursday evening.

Neither. Despite all the attention currently being paid to the swirl of suspicion and controversy surrounding Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, the real story of the recent indictments is one of failure. Because American intelligence officials have known about the Russian threat for decades, and yet still were apparently unable to stop foreign agents from interfering in a democratic election.

American intelligence officials have known about the Russian threat for decades, and yet still were apparently unable to stop foreign agents from interfering in a democratic election.

Take this intercepted court message, released in court proceedings against suspected Russian spies. In the note, Moscow’s orders were clear and simple: “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, your bank accounts, car, house, etc — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, ie to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports) to C (Centre).”

While this missive reads like evidence collected against the 12 GRU agents, it was in fact part of a 2010 FBI case against a group of so-called Russian “illegal” deep cover agents. But 2010 was far from the only warning U.S. agencies received. Indeed, there were convictions and charges brought against both Americans and Russians in 2012 and 2015 (case involving Carter Page).

There are several reasons why this threat may have been missed, or merely considered a lesser priority than other threats. The biggest potential reason is that the September 11 attacks shifted the focus of the intelligence community away from foreign counterintelligence and towards what felt like a more immediate threat: terrorism. This shift makes sense in theory — after all, how many Americans have Russian agents killed in the past 20 years? But it’s also a short-sighted one. Russian efforts to influence and interfere with the democratic process are a real threat to American national security, and they need to be treated as one.

There are several reasons why this threat may have been missed, or merely considered a lesser priority than other threats. The biggest potential reason is that the September 11 attacks shifted the focus of the intelligence community.

Counterintelligence has the singular mission of stopping foreign intelligence operations, like those that occurred in 2016. The lead agency for counterintelligence is the FBI, whose mission is “to neutralize national security threats from foreign intelligence services…[t]he FBI is the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil, and the Counterintelligence Division uses its full suite of investigative and intelligence capabilities to combat counterintelligence threats.”

FBI counterintelligence uses any number of investigative methods, including simply notifying the foreign state that their actions have been detected. States like Russia engage in intelligence operations with the goal of avoiding both detection and direct confrontation. As such, details like those listed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment surely could have been used to let the Russians know that their operations were compromised.

Indeed, on the eve of the 2016 election, President Barack Obama did try to directly warn President Vladimir Putin via the so-called red phone that connects Moscow and the White House. Obama’s message to Putin was that any attempt to interfere with the U.S. election would be considered a “grave matter” and that “International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace.” Furthermore, NBC reported that Obama informed Putin that “[the U.S.] will hold Russia to those standards.”

Obama’s warning to Putin may have staved off some direct manipulation and disruption on the Election Day, but it did not address the actions outlined by the Mueller indictment — which occurred well before November 2016.

If Obama was unaware of the significance of the intelligence that has now been released as part of the Mueller probe, it would not be the first time that a looming threat was downplayed to a U.S. president. While the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief to President George W. Bush warned that Osama Bin Laden “wanted to carry out terrorist attacks in the U.S.,” it failed to elevate the gravity of the threat in the last sentence with “a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the United States planning attacks.”

Maybe the intelligence community failed to communicate the gravity or the full scope of the Russian operation to Obama. Or perhaps it was that an FBI was so focused on counterterrorism in a post 9/11 world that it simply wasn’t prioritizing a Cold War threat. Whatever the reason, it now appears that U.S. intelligence failed to detect and neutralize a significant Russian operation against the United States.

Worse, America’s current president seems determined to ignore the increasingly dire warnings now being communicated by the intelligence community. In other words, although President Donald Trump claims to want to correct the mistakes made by his predecessors, his actions thus far are only making them worse.

Naveed Jamali is an MSNBC intelligence analyst, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former FBI double agent who spent three years successfully working undercover against Russian military intelligence. His book, “How to Catch a Russian Spy,” was published in 2015.

mikenova shared this story from www.chieftain.com – RSS Results in news/pueblo of type article.

An incoming East High School sophomore recently returned from the FBI Youth Leadership Program at the world renowned FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.

Layne Martinez was one of only 60 teenagers selected to participate in the weeklong program, modeled on the National Academy and run by counselors to develop leaders and future criminal justice professionals.

The young men and women who earned spots in the program — the 20th offered by the FBI — did so based on academic achievements, leadership abilities and involvement in school and community.

As part of the application process, Layne was required to submit an essay on the subject of leadership.

“Being a leader isn’t about being correct about anything and everything,” she wrote. “It isn’t being the first or fastest one to complete a mission, nor is it feeling like you have the authority to control other people’s beliefs and shame on them because they may be different than yours.

“Displaying leadership is staying committed to your beliefs, strengths and ideas — making challenging decisions that will not only benefit you, but the people and cause you are fighting for.”

Layne said she applied for the program to strengthen her already prominent leadership skills and to get an inside track at a career in criminal justice.

“I have always wanted to pursue a career in the FBI or law enforcement and I knew I could learn a lot from the counselors and fellow students who had similar aspirations,” she said.

Over the course of the program, Layne and her colleagues learned about the qualities that define a strong leader “and how to apply them in our daily lives, such as always having a positive mindset, doing the right thing when nobody is looking, and standing up for what you believe in even if you may be ridiculed for it.

“We also learned to live by this quote: ‘If not me, then who?’ ”

Before a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., participants were presented with an overview of World War II and the principals involved on both sides.

“Leaders have two options when distributing their strength: They can use it to bring benefit to the people or they can use it for destruction, such as Adolf Hitler,” Layne explained.

There also was a primer on internet and social media safety and etiquette — “we learned that having inappropriate content linked to your name through the internet can come with consequences” — and the 5P Rule of Time Management, which is “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

While the instruction and lessons were vitally important, for Layne, the most exciting part of the program was the opportunity to form bonds with like-minded students from across the country.

“When everyone stepped on their planes on the way to this camp, we had no idea what to expect or who we were going to meet,” Layne said.

“But we formed friendships within hours of meeting one another. When faced with challenges throughout the camp, we faced them together.

“We cheered each other on, accepted everyone for who they are, and we learned from one another.”

As part of the program, participants visited the Hostage Rescue Team facility in Yorktown, a stop that was of special interest to Layne.

“I am currently interested in becoming a special agent, working with the hostage rescue team, or dealing with human trafficking cases,” she said.

“Attending the camp helped me make that decision because we got to personally meet students who are learning at the academy in Quantico.”

As a final mental and physical challenge, the students were tasked with completing a modified version of the grueling “Yellow Brick Road” obstacle course all FBI recruits must navigate.

Fittingly, Layne received a symbolic yellow brick for being a finisher.

“Thursday’s documents — filed as part of a motion in court seeking to withhold more than 50 pieces of evidence from the jury in the upcoming trial — could complicate the EU-focused narrative. Several exhibits included in the court filing seem to contradict Kilimnik’s assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington.

“The Hapsburg team will also do a series of events between March and May in Washington DC designed to change the public rhetoric directed at Ukraine, but to also influence key members of the US Government through private meetings held at the highest levels,” Manafort wrote to Yanukvych in a memo dated Feb. 21, 2013. “This will include major speeches, participation in key events, and private meetings with senior US officials including Secretary of State John Kerry, and other members of the Administration.”

New documents filed in court by Paul Manafort’s lawyers appear to contradict his legal team’s own claims that the former Trump campaign chairman’s team only lobbied on behalf of the Ukrainian government in Europe.

The revelation could be important as Manafort is trying to fend off charges from special counsel Robert Mueller that Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent in connection with his lobbying work for the Ukrainian government. Earlier this year, Mueller accused Manafort and his former deputy, Rick Gates, of secretly organizing a group of former European politicians known as the “Hapsburg group” to lobby in the U.S. for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party.

But, according to prosecutors, Manafort and his longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, pressed those involved in the lobbying campaign to stress that the effort was focused exclusively on the European Union. A federal judge later ruled that Manafort was attempting to tamper with the testimony of potential witnesses and ordered him jailed over the incident.

Thursday’s documents — filed as part of a motion in court seeking to withhold more than 50 pieces of evidence from the jury in the upcoming trial — could complicate the EU-focused narrative. Several exhibits included in the court filing seem to contradict Kilimnik’s assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington.

“The Hapsburg team will also do a series of events between March and May in Washington DC designed to change the public rhetoric directed at Ukraine, but to also influence key members of the US Government through private meetings held at the highest levels,” Manafort wrote to Yanukvych in a memo dated Feb. 21, 2013. “This will include major speeches, participation in key events, and private meetings with senior US officials including Secretary of State John Kerry, and other members of the Administration.”

A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment.

The memo isn’t the first evidence that the Hapsburg group — which included a former Austrian chancellor and a former Italian prime minister — lobbied in the U.S. Manafort wrote in another memo made public by Mueller’s team last month that he had “organized and leveraged” the visits of two Hapsburg group members to Washington. And disclosure reports retroactively filed by two Washington lobbying firms show that members of the Hapsburg group met with lawmakers in Washington around the same time.

Manafort is not set to face trial on his lobbying-related charges until September. However, he will face trial next week on separate Mueller charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

The documents filed by Manafort’s lawyers on Thursday comprise hundreds of pages and offer the most detailed look yet into the lobbying campaign he orchestrated in Europe and Washington.

In a memo to Yanukovych dated Feb. 4, 2013, Manafort wrote that John Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state “is a positive development for us and will be a dramatic change from former Secretary Clinton.”

The Feb. 4 memo isn’t the only one in which Manafort appeared wary of Hillary Clinton, who had stepped down as secretary of state days earlier.

“It is important to understand that holdovers from the Clinton days and the US Embassy in Kyiv are not objective and are conspiring to identify options to get sanctions as a tool to pressure the Yanukovich Government,” Manafort wrote in another memo to Yanukovych.

Manafort also described Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the Europe, Eurasia and emerging threats subcommittee, as good for Ukraine.

Manafort was more pessimistic about Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the new chairman of another subcommittee, suggesting that he’d use his position to raise the issue of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister and Yanukovych’s political rival. Yanukovych’s government imprisoned Tymoshenko on what were widely condemned at the time as politically-motivated charges.

“It is highly likely that Smith uses this subcommittee as a vehicle to hold hearings on [Tymoshenko’s] situation and possibly promote legislation,” the memo reads.

Smith had previously introduced a bill to encourage free and fair Ukrainian elections. Lobbyists hired by Manafort and Gates had lobbied against bills in 2012 condemning Yanukovych’s imprisonment of Tymoshenko.

The lobbyists Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group and Vin Weber of Mercury and the consultant Tad Devine have all confirmed that they worked with Manafort and Gates. But Jackson, a former chief of staff to one-time House Speaker John Boehner, has not been tied to Manafort.

Jackson said he had no idea why his name was there.

“I have done no work with or for Paul Manafort nor on behalf of the Yanukovych regime and know of no reason why my name shows up in a document,” Jackson wrote in an email to POLITICO on Thursday evening.

Neither. Despite all the attention currently being paid to the swirl of suspicion and controversy surrounding Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, the real story of the recent indictments is one of failure. Because American intelligence officials have known about the Russian threat for decades, and yet still were apparently unable to stop foreign agents from interfering in a democratic election.

American intelligence officials have known about the Russian threat for decades, and yet still were apparently unable to stop foreign agents from interfering in a democratic election.

Take this intercepted court message, released in court proceedings against suspected Russian spies. In the note, Moscow’s orders were clear and simple: “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, your bank accounts, car, house, etc — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, ie to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports) to C (Centre).”

While this missive reads like evidence collected against the 12 GRU agents, it was in fact part of a 2010 FBI case against a group of so-called Russian “illegal” deep cover agents. But 2010 was far from the only warning U.S. agencies received. Indeed, there were convictions and charges brought against both Americans and Russians in 2012 and 2015 (case involving Carter Page).

There are several reasons why this threat may have been missed, or merely considered a lesser priority than other threats. The biggest potential reason is that the September 11 attacks shifted the focus of the intelligence community away from foreign counterintelligence and towards what felt like a more immediate threat: terrorism. This shift makes sense in theory — after all, how many Americans have Russian agents killed in the past 20 years? But it’s also a short-sighted one. Russian efforts to influence and interfere with the democratic process are a real threat to American national security, and they need to be treated as one.

There are several reasons why this threat may have been missed, or merely considered a lesser priority than other threats. The biggest potential reason is that the September 11 attacks shifted the focus of the intelligence community.

Counterintelligence has the singular mission of stopping foreign intelligence operations, like those that occurred in 2016. The lead agency for counterintelligence is the FBI, whose mission is “to neutralize national security threats from foreign intelligence services…[t]he FBI is the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil, and the Counterintelligence Division uses its full suite of investigative and intelligence capabilities to combat counterintelligence threats.”

FBI counterintelligence uses any number of investigative methods, including simply notifying the foreign state that their actions have been detected. States like Russia engage in intelligence operations with the goal of avoiding both detection and direct confrontation. As such, details like those listed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment surely could have been used to let the Russians know that their operations were compromised.

Indeed, on the eve of the 2016 election, President Barack Obama did try to directly warn President Vladimir Putin via the so-called red phone that connects Moscow and the White House. Obama’s message to Putin was that any attempt to interfere with the U.S. election would be considered a “grave matter” and that “International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace.” Furthermore, NBC reported that Obama informed Putin that “[the U.S.] will hold Russia to those standards.”

Obama’s warning to Putin may have staved off some direct manipulation and disruption on the Election Day, but it did not address the actions outlined by the Mueller indictment — which occurred well before November 2016.

If Obama was unaware of the significance of the intelligence that has now been released as part of the Mueller probe, it would not be the first time that a looming threat was downplayed to a U.S. president. While the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief to President George W. Bush warned that Osama Bin Laden “wanted to carry out terrorist attacks in the U.S.,” it failed to elevate the gravity of the threat in the last sentence with “a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the United States planning attacks.”

Maybe the intelligence community failed to communicate the gravity or the full scope of the Russian operation to Obama. Or perhaps it was that an FBI was so focused on counterterrorism in a post 9/11 world that it simply wasn’t prioritizing a Cold War threat. Whatever the reason, it now appears that U.S. intelligence failed to detect and neutralize a significant Russian operation against the United States.

Worse, America’s current president seems determined to ignore the increasingly dire warnings now being communicated by the intelligence community. In other words, although President Donald Trump claims to want to correct the mistakes made by his predecessors, his actions thus far are only making them worse.

Naveed Jamali is an MSNBC intelligence analyst, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former FBI double agent who spent three years successfully working undercover against Russian military intelligence. His book, “How to Catch a Russian Spy,” was published in 2015.

mikenova shared this story from www.chieftain.com – RSS Results in news/pueblo of type article.

An incoming East High School sophomore recently returned from the FBI Youth Leadership Program at the world renowned FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.

Layne Martinez was one of only 60 teenagers selected to participate in the weeklong program, modeled on the National Academy and run by counselors to develop leaders and future criminal justice professionals.

The young men and women who earned spots in the program — the 20th offered by the FBI — did so based on academic achievements, leadership abilities and involvement in school and community.

As part of the application process, Layne was required to submit an essay on the subject of leadership.

“Being a leader isn’t about being correct about anything and everything,” she wrote. “It isn’t being the first or fastest one to complete a mission, nor is it feeling like you have the authority to control other people’s beliefs and shame on them because they may be different than yours.

“Displaying leadership is staying committed to your beliefs, strengths and ideas — making challenging decisions that will not only benefit you, but the people and cause you are fighting for.”

Layne said she applied for the program to strengthen her already prominent leadership skills and to get an inside track at a career in criminal justice.

“I have always wanted to pursue a career in the FBI or law enforcement and I knew I could learn a lot from the counselors and fellow students who had similar aspirations,” she said.

Over the course of the program, Layne and her colleagues learned about the qualities that define a strong leader “and how to apply them in our daily lives, such as always having a positive mindset, doing the right thing when nobody is looking, and standing up for what you believe in even if you may be ridiculed for it.

“We also learned to live by this quote: ‘If not me, then who?’ ”

Before a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., participants were presented with an overview of World War II and the principals involved on both sides.

“Leaders have two options when distributing their strength: They can use it to bring benefit to the people or they can use it for destruction, such as Adolf Hitler,” Layne explained.

There also was a primer on internet and social media safety and etiquette — “we learned that having inappropriate content linked to your name through the internet can come with consequences” — and the 5P Rule of Time Management, which is “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

While the instruction and lessons were vitally important, for Layne, the most exciting part of the program was the opportunity to form bonds with like-minded students from across the country.

“When everyone stepped on their planes on the way to this camp, we had no idea what to expect or who we were going to meet,” Layne said.

“But we formed friendships within hours of meeting one another. When faced with challenges throughout the camp, we faced them together.

“We cheered each other on, accepted everyone for who they are, and we learned from one another.”

As part of the program, participants visited the Hostage Rescue Team facility in Yorktown, a stop that was of special interest to Layne.

“I am currently interested in becoming a special agent, working with the hostage rescue team, or dealing with human trafficking cases,” she said.

“Attending the camp helped me make that decision because we got to personally meet students who are learning at the academy in Quantico.”

As a final mental and physical challenge, the students were tasked with completing a modified version of the grueling “Yellow Brick Road” obstacle course all FBI recruits must navigate.

Fittingly, Layne received a symbolic yellow brick for being a finisher.

Former Chancellor Schroeder calls statements by Foreign Minister Maas in the case of Ozil “simply unbearable”.

Among other things, Maas had said that “the case of a multi-millionaire living and working in England provides information about the ability to integrate in Germany”.

Mesut Özil has declared his resignation from the national team on Sunday and just this, among other things with racism against him.

Former Federal Chancellor and SPD leader Gerhard Schröder has sharply criticized Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) for commenting on the case of Mesut Özil. Speaking to the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Schröder said that a foreign minister, as part of the debate on a German soccer player with Turkish roots, admitted that Maas had done so was “simply unbearable”.

Maas’s “dull comments” on Özil also have “nothing at all to do with social democratic ideas of integration”. The Foreign Minister makes the football player not only indirectly to the charge that he earns a lot of money and his food point currently not in Germany. In a way, he also doubts that “Özil really belongs here”. With his statements he plays into the hands of those who rejected Mesut Özilbecause of the Turkish origin of his family.

24/07/18 12:58 from Mike Nova’s Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from [Untitled]. Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin in 2005, two months before Schroeder left office and became chairman of the Nord Stream project’s s…

M.N.: If the “German Hypothesis” of the “Operations Trump and 9/11” (and those in-between, known and unknown) is properly investigated, and proves to be true, at least in part; it will have the most profound implications and impacts on practically “everything”.

Something has been going on with Robert Mueller’s investigation of people thought to have played significant roles in the Trump-Russia affair. The special counsel, assigned to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” has been farming out seemingly important parts of the investigation to offices outside his own.

In April, Mueller referred an investigation of close Trump associate Michael Cohen to federal prosecutors in New York. This month, the U.S. attorney in Washington — not Mueller — indicted Maria Butina on charges of being an unregistered Russian agent. And also this month, when Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign offices, he immediately turned the case over to the Justice Department’s National Security Division for prosecution.

Cohen is a key figure in theories of Trump-Russia collusion. In former British spy Christopher Steele’s notorious dossier, Cohen was accused of holding secret talks with Russian officials in August 2016 to discuss “how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally.”

If that’s not collusion, nothing is. Such activities, if they occurred, would be at the center of Mueller’s jurisdiction. And yet Mueller handed Cohen off to the Southern District of New York.

Butina figures in theories that a wealthy Russian banker “illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency,” in the words of a McClatchy report from January.

Again, such activities, if they actually took place, would clearly be in Mueller’s bailiwick.

Finally, the indictment of the 12 Russian intelligence agents goes to the very heart of Russian attempts to interfere with the U.S. presidential campaign, the investigation of which is Mueller’s responsibility. Yet once Mueller indicted them, he handed the case over to the Justice Department.

What is going on? I asked a few former federal prosecutors if they saw any messages in Mueller’s moves. The take-away: These aren’t encouraging developments for those longing for a big collusion/conspiracy/coordination indictment from Mueller.

“I think it proves that little, if any, of what Mueller’s team has generated so far is linked to the special counsel’s mandate,” said Former Prosecutor 1. “Everything that is public so far could, should and typically is handled by either United States Attorney offices of jurisdiction, National Security Division attorneys or even Criminal Division attorneys at main Justice.”

“I think Mueller doesn’t have anything on collusion,” said Former Prosecutor 2. “I think we would have seen it. I don’t see anything that looks like there’s a crime lurking — maybe he’s got eight indictments under seal, but to me, it makes no sense. All of this says to me there is no there.”

Former Prosecutor 3 said the investigations passed off indicate the subject matter is “outside (Mueller’s) jurisdiction.”

Some former prosecutors drew a distinction between the Cohen and Butina cases, in which Mueller handed off the investigation to others, and the 12 Russians case, in which Mueller made the indictment himself and then handed off the prosecution. That could be because Mueller realized that his team, staffed with investigators, could not manage a complex prosecution in the courtroom.

“They don’t have the bandwidth to handle a highly technical case like that,” said Former Prosecutor 2. From Former Prosecutor 3: “Good investigators aren’t good litigators, and very often the best courtroom lawyers aren’t the best subject matter experts.”

It has been widely observed that there is no way the 12 Russians — government intelligence officers located in Russia — will ever come to the United States for trial. “There is absolutely no chance any of the Russian officials charged will ever see the inside of an American courtroom,” Andrew McCarthy, another former federal prosecutor, wrote in National Review. “The indictment is a strictly political document by which the special counsel seeks to justify the existence of his superfluous investigation.”

Other legal types, including yet another Justice Department veteran, said moving the 12 Russians’ case to a highly secretive part of the department is a good way to make the case disappear. “If Mueller kept it in his office, people would ask what’s going on with the case,” said the veteran. “But when he gives it to the National Security Division, it falls off the face of the earth. It’s a way of burying it.”

Taken together, none of that points to the big collusion/conspiracy/coordination indictment of Resistance dreams. Such an indictment might still be on the way, of course — no one on the outside has a full picture of what is going on inside Mueller’s office — but the signs don’t seem to be pointing toward it.

Finally, all the handed-off cases raise questions about whether a special prosecutor was needed at all. Mueller clearly felt there was no need for a special prosecutor to pursue Cohen or Butina — and one could argue that the Butina case, at least, was closer to Mueller’s core mission than the Paul Manafort prosecution. And if the 12 Russians matter, a case that goes to the heart of the Trump-Russia affair, can be fairly tried by DOJ prosecutors, it’s reasonable to ask: Why was a special counsel appointed in the first place?

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has started a two-day visit to Romania and Bulgaria with a visit to the grave of his father.Mr Schroeder never knew his father, Fritz Schroeder, a soldier who died fighting in Romania in 1944.

The location of the grave was first discovered three years ago, but previous planned visits were cancelled.

This is a deeply emotional event for Mr Schroeder, who grew up without even knowing where his father had died.

The chancellor’s sister tracked down the grave in the remote Romanian village of Ceanu Mare, 375 km (235 miles) north-west of Bucharest.

The area was cordoned off to the public on Thursday as Mr Schroeder’s entourage arrived.

The chancellor was greeted by an Orthodox priest and an Eastern Rite Catholic priest at the church.

He was given a round loaf of bread and a wreath of mauve flowers as a symbol of grief, before walking inside the church grounds with Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase.

Pride

Mr Schroeder’s father, an unskilled labourer, is buried in a collective grave with eight other soldiers in the Orthodox cemetery.

Schroeder has said he felt no ill effects from being fatherless

The grave is marked with a carved wooden cross and a black marble plaque listing the names of the nine soldiers.Drafted into the German army in 1940, he was killed on 4 October, 1944 aged 32, along with his comrades as they were retreating.

Many local people gathered in the village to discuss the visit. Some raised concerns that the chancellor may want his father’s body dug up and repatriated.

Local farmer Ion Valean, 73, told the Associated Press news agency: “We are proud that the father of a head of state is buried here. We are also happy that they paved the roads.”

A stretch of about 18km (11 miles) were asphalted in 2001 when Mr Schroeder had first planned to visit his father’s grave.

That trip was cancelled following the 11 September attacks in the US, but Mr Nastase extended the invitation on a visit to Berlin last year.

The BBC’s Ray Furlong says that since the discovery of the grave, the chancellor has been asked whether growing up without a father affected him psychologically.

He responded that he did not know, but that he had not felt any ill effects.

Mr Schroeder’s visit to the region will resume official duties with political talks in Bucharest, followed by a working visit to Bulgaria on the second day of his trip.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants to meet at the White House with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019 — sometime after the Justice Department’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election is over, his national security adviser says

The Doctrine of Evil

To understand the Orthodox view and practice of exorcism, one must know the Orthodox presuppositions of evil and its doctrine of Satan. The patristic evidence points to the fact that the cause of evil in the world is the devil. The devil was created by God as an angel, who was free, and as a free agent chose to oppose the plan of God. That is, the devil is a fallen angel. Satan is not evil by nature, but by will and action. In Satan there is no truth whatsoever; he is absolute falsehood and deception. Satan is not just a negation or deprivation of good, but a positive force with free will that always chooses evil. The devil has the ability to recognize divine power, as in the incident of recognizing Christ as the Son of God (Matt. 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-3). Satan has under his leadership legions and invisible powers, with their own “satanic teachings.” The devil and evil spirits know that God exists and recognize true and devoted Christians, but pious Christians discern the plans of the devil. The devil, however, constantly employs every method of deception to enslave man to satanic forces and causes rebellion against God. He is the cause of corruption and disorder, a parasitic power in the world that will ultimately be destroyed by the power of God in the “last days.” Because there is no compromise between God and the devil, the struggle will continue until the end.

The Orthodox doctrine of God is that He is eternal, uncreated and incorporeal. All other creatures, both visible and invisible, were created by God as free. The power of the devil will ultimately be destroyed by the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of creation. Salvation from all evil will be attained by obedience to God and His plan. This world is a battleground between the acceptance of good and evil. It must be pointed out that the world as the creation of God is not evil. What is evil is the satanic power, destroyed by the power of the cross and the resurrection of Christ.

The Orthodox Tradition of Exorcising

After examining the doctrine of Satan in the Orthodox Church, it is imperative to proceed to the method of repelling and exorcising the evil powers. In the New Testament, Christ sent out His apostles to heal and to “cast out devils” (Matt. 10:8, Luke 10:17-20). Christ Himself often expels demons from the possessed (Mark 1:23-27; Luke 4:33-35, 9:43; Matt. 10:1; Mark 16:17; Matt. 7:22). The New Testament, however, rejected popular uses of magic incantations and rites to expel the satanic powers from people, because they took advantage of superstitious religiosity (Acts 19:13).

In the name of Christ, one is able to cast out demons and to destroy the evil powers (Matt. 10:8). The Fathers of the Church accepted this doctrine and expanded on it. Justin Martyr (Apology 85, 2) says that in the name of Christ, the Son of God who was crucified and rose again, every demon that is exorcised is defeated and submits (Library of the Greek Fathers and Church Writers, Athens: Apostolike Diakonia 1955, Vol. 3, pp. 288-89). The satanic powers are destroyed through the power of the cross and the name of Christ. Objects possessed by demons, when exorcised in the name of the living God, are freed from the possession of evil. The patristic evidence is abundant in the belief in possession and expulsion of the devil by the power of the word of God (Ignatios, Epistles to Philippians 3 and 12; Library of the Greek Fathers and Church Writers, Vol. 2, pp. 333 and 336; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 4:14; Library, Vol 8, p. 82; Origen, Against Celsus, 6:44; Library, Vol. 10, p. 93).

The demonic possession of individuals and even of objects, has been accepted by the Orthodox Church today in the Sacrament of Baptism, in exorcising satanic powers in the case of the evil eye (vaskania), and in exorcising the devil in the case of a possessed person. In the early Church exorcisms were performed by a person especially trained and appointed to pray to drive out evil from those about to be baptized. Since the fourth century the place of the exorcist, as well as other functions and ministries, have been taken over by the priest. The exorcisms are prayers that invoke God to expel evil spirits. The priest prays to expel all evil, the spirit of error, of idolatry, of covetousness, of Iying and every impure act that arises from the teachings of the devil. The renunciation of the devil in baptism is used in every baptism that is performed in the Orthodox Church.

Vaskania

The exorcism of satanic powers is also performed by the Orthodox Church in other rites, such as that of the evil eye (vaskania).

Vaskania is simply a phenomenon that was accepted by primitive people as fact. They believed that certain people have such powerful feelings of jealousy and envy, that when they looked on some beautiful object or individual it brought destruction. Vaskania is recognized by the Church as the jealousy and envy of some people for things they do not possess, such as beauty, youth, courage or any other blessing. The Church essentially rejected Vaskania as contradicting the concept of divine providence. The prayers of the Church to avert the evil eye are, however, a silent recognition of this phenomenon as a morbid feeling of envy. The Church forbids people to go to “readers” or other individuals for use of magical rituals to overcome the evil eye. These readers take advantage of the weakness of superstitious people and destroy them spiritually and financially by playing upon their imagination.

There is also a secret rite performed by superstitious people to avert the evil eye, which verges on magic. Though the Church encourages even the laity to pray and exorcise evil, it rejects magical practices and rites. This secret rite is described as follows: “The exorcist (not a priest but an old woman) prepares a vial of olive oil and a small glass of water. She dips a finger in the oil, rubs it in a sign of the Cross on the victim’s forehead and lets one drop fall onto the water; she repeats the process, making a cross on the forehead, on the chin and both cheeks. If the devil is indeed present, the four drops of oil in the water join to form the ellipsoid shape of an eye. The ritual then calls for the reading of prayers and repeating the four signs of the Cross; the drops of oil will not join in the water, but will disperse.”

The possession of individuals by the devil and demonic powers and the cure in the name of Christ is evidenced in the New Testament (Acts 3:2-8, 9:32-42; 20:7-12; Matt. 10:8; Mark 16:17-18). The Church continues in its liturgical rites what Christ enacted in His ministry. The Church recognizes the influence of evil and renounces it in the name of Christ in prayers and fasting. The prayers of exorcism in the early Church were offered by special ministry through the exorcist. This is evidenced from the early prayers that have survived. From the fourth century onwards, the ministry of the exorcist has been fulfilled by the priest.

Orthodox Prayers of Exorcism

All the Orthodox prayer books include prayers of exorcism used by priests to fight the power of evil. The Orthodox Book of Prayers (Euchologion To Mega) includes three prayers of exorcism by Saint Basil and four by Saint John Chrysostom. They are read “for those who suffer from demonic possessions and every other malady.” Through these prayers, the devil is exorcised (renounced) “in the name of God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, and commanded to come out of the victim, who is liberated and redeemed by the eternal God from the energies (powers) of the impure spirits. The great ills that humanity suffers are attributed to the devil and demonic power.”

From the Orthodox theological point of view, the following can be considered exorcists:

Christ is the exorcist par excellence for it is He who won the victory over the power of the devil.

Priests in the performance of the holy sacraments and in preaching the word of God follow Christ’s example.

All Orthodox Christians are exorcists as they struggle against personal sin and social evil. In fact, “the whole Church, past, present and future, has the task of an exorcist to banish sin, evil, injustice, spiritual death, the devil from the life of humanity.” Archbishop Iakovos, in a sermon at the Sage Chapel, Cornell University, spoke on exorcism in the following manner: “Both healing and exorcising are ministered through prayers, which spring from faith in God and from love for man…. All the prayers of healing and exorcism, composed by the Fathers of the Church and in use since the third century, begin with the solemn declaration: In Thy Name, O Lord.’ ” (Exorcism and Exorcists in the Greek Orthodox Tradition, March 10, 1974.)

In summary, the four prayers of exorcism by Saint John Chrysostom and the three of Saint Basil ask in the name of God to deliver the possessed from the captivity of the devil. Some can be healed by faith accompanied by fasting and purification. The use of exorcism must be made with discretion and great care. (For details, see G. Papademetriou, “Exorcism and the Greek Orthodox Church,” in Exorcism Through the Ages, New York: Philosophical Library, 1974.)

the hilt is the part of the sword that shields the hand or is the transition part of the sword from blade to the handle. literally means to go all the way one can with the sword “take it to the hilt” … but is used as a metaphor in all situations.

the phrase that is yelled out when a man wants his lady friend to deepthroat him, not the mighty thrust of a broadsword where every inch of its deadly blade is stuffed into some poor sucker’s belly stopping only when the righteous hilt is pressed against the flesh of the victim.

Ex-CIA chief Brennan compares Trump to Bernie MadoffThe HillTrump tweeted. Madoff oversaw the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, with prosecutors estimating he cheated clients out of $64.8 billion. Brennan directed the CIA from 2013-2017. Before he left the agency, he began publicly criticizing Trump’s…

For those who buy inexpensive smartphones in developing countries where privacy protections are usually low, convenience could come with a hidden cost: preloaded apps that harvest users’ data without their knowledge.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel cleared the final domestic hurdle toward limiting the influx of illegal immigrants to Germany, after her center-left coalition partner agreed to make it easier for police to expel some migrants who turn up at the border.

The majority obtained in Mexico’s Congress by the political parties supporting Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the winner of Sunday’s election, is so overwhelming that the future president is very close to the two-thirds majority needed to pass constitutional reforms.

Although Mr. Ames was able to elude detection for nearly nine years, those interviewed are clearly proud of their investigation’s successful conclusion. This despite a House Intelligence Committee report that has criticized the bureau’s officials for a “wait and see” approach to finding a spy who had done great damage to American intelligence.

Mr. Ames, a counterintelligence officer in the C.I.A.’s Soviet division, began providing information to the Kremlin in 1985 and continued doing so until his arrest, along with that of his wife, Rosario, at their home outside Washington last Feb. 21. Over the years, the K.G.B. and its successor agencies in Russia paid him more than $2.5 million, in exchange for which he compromised more than a hundred Western intelligence operations and in effect sent at least 10 men to their death by identifying them as agents of the West.

Mr. Ames last year pleaded guilty to spying for Moscow, and his wife pleaded guilty to a lesser espionage offense. He is serving a life sentence at a Federal prison in Allenwood, Pa. She is serving a five-year sentence in Danbury, Conn.

The F.B.I.’s involvement in the case began with a fruitless analytical effort undertaken in the late 1980’s, after two of the bureau’s premier double agents, both K.G.B. men in Washington, had been recalled by Moscow and executed. In its search for the betrayer of the two men, the F.B.I. focused on Edward Lee Howard, a junior C.I.A. officer who had defected to Moscow. But the bureau concluded that although Mr. Howard might have known the identity of one man, he had not known the identity of the other.

The search was then largely dormant until 1991, when officials of the intelligence agency told the F.B.I. of a string of operational disasters that could be explained only by the presence of a mole inside American intelligence.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 19, 2013. Unmanned drones are flying in American skies conducting surveillance on people in the United States, albeit in a “ve

With all the North Korean summit and Donald Trump’s spat with Justin Trudeau sucking up all the airtime, some may have missed an important development in the Mueller probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 Presidential campaign.

In the piece, writer Christopher Strohm argues that the charges against Kilimnik represent a breakthrough in the case because it “links senior officials on President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to Russian intelligence in a criminal matter.”

“This is an alleged Russian spy committing crimes with the former campaign chairman for Trump,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told Bloomberg. “When people first thought of the Mueller investigation, this is what people thought would result from it.”

But that’s not the point, former prosecutor Katie Phang told Bloomberg.

“The indictment serves a strategic purpose in raising public awareness about the connections that those who worked on Trump’s campaign had with Russians, and it serves a legal purpose by putting more pressure on Manafort to become a cooperating witness,” the story says.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is tapping additional Justice Department resources for help with new legal battles as his year-old investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election continues to expand.

As Mueller pursues his probe, he’s making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents — a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Mueller and his team of 17 federal prosecutors are coping with a higher-then-expected volume of court challenges that has added complexity in recent months, but there’s no political appetite at this time to increase the size of his staff, the officials said.

According to his most recent statement of expenditures, more money is being spent on work done by permanent Department of Justice units than on Mueller’s own dedicated operation. The DOJ units spent $9 million from the investigation’s start in May 2017 through March of this year, compared with $7.7 million spent by Mueller’s team.

Trump’s Allies

Mueller’s probe has come under attack from President Donald Trump and his allies who say it’s going on too long, expanding too far and costing too much. But the special counsel’s charter, issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, includes investigating whether Trump or associates colluded with Russia and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Investigators in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh and elsewhere have been tapped to supplement the work of Mueller’s team, the officials said. Mueller has already handed off one major investigation — into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen — to the Southern District of New York.

“Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Rosenstein during a June 28 hearing. Rosenstein said Mueller knows he must move expeditiously.

A heavy investigative load for Mueller had been anticipated from the start, the officials said. The special counsel has already issued 20 indictments and secured guilty pleas from five individuals, and some of the defendants are mounting stiffer-than-expected battles in court.

“I don’t think he’s getting in over his head,” said Solomon Wisenberg, who served as deputy independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “These things have a tendency to balloon. Yes, it may be taxing on them. No, it’s not that unusual.”

Nor is it unusual for Mueller to turn to U.S. attorneys or to Justice Department headquarters, said Wisenberg, who’s now a partner at the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP.

Subpoena Decision

Mueller is dealing with the legal battles as he considers whether to subpoena Trump for an interview and as he accelerates his investigation into potential collusion.

The first — and perhaps biggest — court case for Mueller is over his indictment of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for an array of financial crimes. Manafort is fighting the indictment in two federal courthouses, and he expanded his case last week to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Both sides are now gearing up for a trial to begin later this month.

“It’s going to be all hands on deck when they go to the Manafort trial,” Wisenberg said.

Other court fights may have come as a surprise.

Russians Fight Back

Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three entities in February on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere with the U.S. election through the manipulation of social media.

None of the targets are in the U.S., but one of them, the Internet Research Agency, has forced Mueller into another legal fight in federal court. The two sides have been sparring most recently over how to protect sensitive investigative materials from disclosure. Mueller has enlisted prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington to handle the case.

Another surprise came last week when Andrew Miller, a former aide to Trump adviser Roger Stone, filed a sealed motion to fight one of Mueller’s grand jury subpoenas.

Mueller also plans to move eventually to sentencing for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.

‘Busy Guy’

“He’s a busy guy,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor.

“There’s certainly multiple fronts going on right now,” said Cramer, who’s now managing director of the international investigation firm Berkeley Research Group LLC. “Some of them are more active than others.”

Cramer doesn’t think Mueller’s in over his head but says he might be taking timing into consideration when it comes to making additional moves.

“You don’t have unlimited resources in a sense that you’ve got an unlimited cadre of prosecutors and agents,” Cramer said. “There does come a time where they can only do so much.”

Mueller has already shown that in some situations he will hand off cases, such as with the Cohen investigation. Additionally, Mueller is getting help from Rosenstein, who is fielding congressional demands for documents and testimony.

In the end, though, Mueller knew what he was signing up for.

“While there’s a lot on the plate, they’re not all going on all at once,” Cramer said. “His office is doing their job. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing.”

“The world no longer needs Special Counsel Robert Mueller to tell it that with the election of Trump in 2016, Putin got his man in the Oval Office.”

KGB agents like Vladimir Putin have always been very good at spotting and employing people they call “useful idiots.”

Usually the idiots have been socialists or communist fellow travellers among Russia’s enemies who are easily persuaded to promote Moscow’s case.

But not always. Sometimes the useful idiots are merely foreign politicians or movers-and-shakers whose interests and views of the world coincided with those of Moscow.

Donald Trump falls into this category.

The world no longer needs Special Counsel Robert Mueller to tell it that with the election of Trump in 2016, Putin got his man in the Oval Office.

The United States Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on Tuesday confirming what Washington’s intelligence agencies have been saying for months. Putin threw the full weight of his propaganda and cyber espionage battalions behind the effort to get Trump elected.

Whether Trump, his family and campaign mafioso “colluded” with the Russians is almost irrelevant at this point. Everything that Trump has said and done on the international stage since coming to office has been in the interests of Putin’s Russia and not those of the U.S. and its allies. Trump has moved with persistent determination to demolish all the trade and security alliances and institutions the U.S. has been foremost in creating since the Second World War. Only Putin’s Russia and, waiting in the wings, Xi Jinpiung’s China, benefit from Trump’s hubris and criminal stupidity.

It’s not that Trump is a traitor to the U.S. in the classic sense, as some eminent commentators have written.

There was no moment when Trump kissed Putin’s ring. By his character and nature Trump was pre-programmed to betray the U.S., and Putin – alert KGB man that he is – saw a pigeon ready for the plucking.

Trump is a narcissist who, lacking any creative urges or abilities, uses chaos and destruction to ensure the focus of attention is always on him. Like many weak and self-pitying people, Trump is a bully who berates all those around him to hide the fact that he has nothing sensible to say and no vision of what might be created. He strikes out because he fears more knowledgeable and insightful people may expose his unplumbed shallowness. He lies because he fears the truth.

So, since the U.S. confirmed that it is a failing, gerrymandered democracy and put Trump in the Oval Office, the world has seen him flaying about like a boy with a stick in a nettle patch.

Trump has denounced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “obsolete” and pointedly shied away from committing to the pledge to mutual defence that is at the heart of the alliance. He has rudely dismissed all Washington’s trade alliances, especially the free-trade pact with Canada and Mexico, as means by which the U.S. is bled dry. The World Trade Organization has treated the U.S. “very badly.” In an unmatched piece of absurd ignorance, Trump even said the European Union “was put there to take advantage of the United States.”

Any hopes that Trump’s pompous malevolence might be just an act to placate his “base” were conclusively sunk at the summit of the G-7 major industrialized countries in Quebec last month. Trump was recalcitrant throughout the meeting, backed off signing the final communique, and then, while flying away on Airforce One, Tweeted that his host, Justin Trudeau, was “Very dishonest and weak.”

While Trump is President, the G-7 is defunct.

Having abused the best friends of the U.S., Trump flew to Singapore to fawn on North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, one of the world’s nastiest despots with a record of killing even his closest relatives who get out of line.

But Kim played Trump like a violin. In return for giving Trump a glossy ten-by-eight of them shaking hands and a meaningless piece of paper with vague promises about peace and plenty, Kim got recognition from Washington that North Korea is in the club of nuclear weapons powers. He also got a de facto end to economic sanctions.

Since then, Kim has confirmed that his commitment to “de-nuclearization” of the Korean peninsular is so far in the future as to be out of sight by restarting his weapons program.

This makes dangerously stupid Trump’s boast that the world is now safer than when he met Kim. It’s been said many times, but Trump is not a man to be trusted to lead what is still the world’s major military superpower.

The denouement of this appalling story may come next week when Trump is due to attend the summit of the 29 NATO member states in Brussels. After what will undoubtedly be a difficult and perhaps even catastrophic summit, Trump is due to fly to Helsinki for a one-on-one with Putin. The imagery of Pinocchio rushing to Geppetto’s arms is too outlandish to contemplate. Apparently, no one in the White House has the slightest clue about visuals.

Trump has strewn confusion along the path to this meeting by refusing to rule out recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which it took from Ukraine in 2014. A whole raft of United Nations-backed sanctions against Russia stem from this annexation and Moscow’s invasion of occupation of tracts of eastern Ukraine.

In classic bully style of hitting out before being hit, Trump set the stage for the summit by firing off nasty letters to several of the NATO leaders. All the letters were variations on the theme that most NATO members are defrauding the U.S. by not spending two per cent of their gross national products on defence, as they have committed to do. Most NATO countries have increased defence spending since Trump railed at them last year. But Trump clearly has no understanding of the nuances of analysis involved in defence spending.

For example, Greece has for years spent more than two per cent of GDP on defence. But large hunks of that money go on pensions for veterans and a large standing army that is far from being battle-ready. In contrast, Norway still spends less than two per cent of GDP, but its troops are well-equipped, well-trained and among the first to deploy to any NATO campaign.

While it is unlikely that Trump will be able to kick the skids out from under NATO and destroy the alliance that has sustained peace and prosperity over much of the world since its founding in 1949, members are increasingly apprehensive.

The creation of an integrated European defence force is already underway, and there are rumours of current NATO members exploring informal alliances and deeper defence co-operation. A big question is what happens to Britain, which provides Europe’s most potent military, once it leave the European Union at the end of March next year.

If the Canadian government is not already thinking about post-NATO options, it had better start quickly.

As the friends and enemies of the U.S. contemplate the Fourth of July, 2018, a looming question is whether Trump is a temporary aberration and that life will return to normal after the 2020 presidential elections.

That is a dangerous straw of hope to cling to. Trump is the symptom of a deep-seated disease in U.S. politics and society. His ravings echo and lead a chorus of anger, frustration and fear among large segments of U.S. society. There is no sign that anyone in the political or civil society classes have the slightest idea of how to remake America before it cascades into what German economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 called the “gale of Creative Destruction.”

—
The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

Donald Trump recently said that he no longer wants to see the sight of a Mercedes on Fifth Avenue in New York. It was a right hook aimed squarely at the chin of Daimler and the German economy. And the timing could not have been better. The American president knows how vulnerable Germany automobile manufacturers are in the wake of the diesel scandal and also how important the American market is to them. The Department of Justice is currently investigating Daimler and the Trump administration is also considering whether to impose higher import tariffs on German carmakers. Trump views both measures as an opportunity to protect the domestic car industry while at the same time weakening its German competitors.

But beyond Volkswagen, Daimler and the others, Deutsche Bank, Bayer and numerous other German companies both small and large are beginning to realize just how skillful the Trump administration can be when it comes to applying pressure on foreign firms. Washington, it would seem, is pursuing its “America First” doctrine at all levels — in the form of tariffs, taxes and fines, but also on the level of individual companies.

Irritation is growing within both the European business community and the German government over the Trump administration’s ruthless approach. During a trip to Beijing last week, Joe Kaeser, CEO of global engineering giant Siemens, lamented an American policy of “tariffs and tweets.” The statement represented something of a reversal of course for the executive. At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, he and other German executives were fawning over Trump.

With his attacks, Trump has succeeded repeatedly in dividing Europe and playing French and German interests against each other as well as driving a wedge between Eastern and Western Europe. And when the European Union is divided, its companies also become easier prey for Trump.

Advertisement

There is nothing novel about the U.S. exploiting its dominant position in the global economy to advance its interests. The American market is vital to companies in Europe and Asia, both due to its size and its consumerist philosophy. But that importance leads to dependencies.

America derives its greatest power through the dollar. More than four-fifths of global trade is processed using the American currency, and those using it must abide by American rules. Trump’s predecessors have repeatedly reminded the rest of the world of that obligation in the past.

‘Trump Has Turned the Dollar into a Weapon’

But rarely has anyone exploited the power of the currency to the degree Trump is doing. “Donald Trump has turned the dollar into a weapon,” says Davide Serra, CEO of Algebris Asset Management. The Italian, who holds a British passport, knows what he’s talking about — his company invests in banks and corporations all over Europe. He says Trump is using the dollar to assert America’s influence on the corporate world far beyond its own borders.

The U.S. president recently unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran and took steps toward the implementation of new sanctions banning dollar-denominated transactions with the country. Even if they comply with European Union law, European companies and banks could face massive sanctions in the U.S. if they conduct business with Iran once those sanctions are in place.

Consistent with the same logic, the new sanctions recently imposed by the U.S. on Russian oligarchs are especially painful for European companies.

And it’s not only the dollar that Trump is using to enforce economic interests. He’s taking advantage of any instrument available that can be used to target foreign companies. These include banking supervision rules, cartel laws and even something as seemingly arcane as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the interagency body that reviews all transactions that could result in a foreign company gaining control of a U.S. entity. The body’s mandate is to monitor U.S. national security interests in the course of acquisitions of American companies by foreign investors. Under Trump, however, the committee has been given considerable leeway in interpreting its mandate.

DER SPIEGEL

Graphic: Unfair treatment?

“CFIUS’s influence on German companies is underestimated,” says Rainer Langel, the head of Germany operations at Australian bank Macquarie. Increasingly frequently, he says, owners of German companies are only able to sell their company at a price that is significantly lower than what interested Chinese parties would have offered. The reason: The sellers fear that CFIUS will prohibit the takeover by a Chinese company, even though the German companies in question only generate a small portion of their revenues in the U.S.

Under Trump, the extent to which the Americans are exploiting German firms’ exposure in the U.S. has become conspicuous. Companies like Deutsche Bank, which has become a greater challenge to U.S. banks than any other foreign financial institution. Under former CEO Josef Ackermann, the company made major inroads in the U.S., right up until the 2008 global financial crisis. In doings so, the Germans riled both their competitors and the U.S. government. At the same time, Deutsche Bank made itself vulnerable through its involvement in numerous scandals, becoming the focus of numerous investigations and fines by U.S. investigators.

The fact that Deutsche Bank’s dubious business practices resulted in expensive settlements is appropriate. But it seems fair to say that investigations into other banks were not subject to nearly as many leaks as those into Germany’s leading financial institution. In fall 2016, when the Justice Department forced Deutsche into a multibillion dollar settlement for dubious mortgage-backed securities, leaks about the possible size of the fine led to a collapse in the company’s share price and pushed the bank to the edge of the abyss. To this day, leaks continue to weaken the unloved competitor from Germany.

On June 1, the websites of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times both posted bad news for Deutsche Bank at almost exactly the same time. They reported that the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the deposit protection fund Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC). had deemed Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations to be in “troubled condition.” The astounding thing, though, is that the Fed made its decision a year ago and the FDIC at the beginning of 2018, but it was only months later, and then on the same day, that these damaging assessments of Deutsche Bank’s operations came to light.

Coming as it did just before Trump declared trade war on the Europeans in the form of punitive tariffs on steel and aluminum, it came across as being a coordinated effort.

A Deliberate and Targeted Manner?

Insiders at the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, and at the Finance Ministry assume the crisis reports on Deutsche Bank were the result of a targeted leak intended to put pressure on the company and Germany. The bank’s American competitors have generally gotten off relatively lightly, these sources claim, suggesting that the U.S. authorities may have been sparing their institutions to provide them with a competitive edge. Given the amount of latitude the Justice Department has, the possible unequal treatment can’t be proven. Deutsche Bank did not want to comment on the matter.

Whereas American banks remain the undisputed leaders not only in the U.S., but also well beyond, the balance of power in the global automotive industry is markedly different. Here, German manufacturers from VW to Daimler to BMW dominate. That’s why the U.S. government has been ratcheting up pressure on German carmakers since Trump took office.

Their preferred target has been Volkswagen. The Wolfsburg-based company reached a settlement with the Justice Department at the beginning of 2017. In total, the fines the company had to pay along with the compensation to American owners of its diesel vehicles amounted to more than $20 billion. There is no question that the company deserved the punishment. It’s growth in the U.S. market had been based on the myth of clean diesel, a lie the company perpetuated by installing cheat devices in its diesel vehicles allowing VW to claim far lower emissions than was actually the case.

But the longer the scandal drags on, the more critically industry insiders are asking what is happening with other manufacturers with deeper roots in the U.S. — car companies that are also believed to have manipulated emissions readings. In May 2017, for example, the Justice Department accused Fiat-Chrysler of deploying cheat software in close to 104,000 of its diesel vehicles. But the proceedings have been slow and a decision over a possible penalty still hasn’t been made.

Increasing Pressure on Daimler

Instead, the U.S. authorities appear to be increasing pressure on Daimler. Representatives of the Stuttgart company were recently summoned to appear before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It’s already a foregone conclusion that Daimler is going to have to pay a considerable sum, and at this point negotiations are focusing on how high the settlement will be, say sources within the U.S. justice system. Officials at Daimler say they won’t comment on speculation over ongoing legal proceedings.

For VW, too, the scandal in the U.S. isn’t over yet. At the beginning of May, the U.S. District Court in Detroit confirmed charges against former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn on the very day that new VW head Herbert Diess called for a cultural shift at the company during its annual shareholder meeting.

The Trump administration hasn’t been quite as audacious in targeting companies in other economic sectors. The week before last, for example, U.S. antitrust authorities approved Bayer’s takeover of the agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto. But what first appears to be evidence of the openness of the U.S. market could ultimately prove to be a pyrrhic victory for Bayer.

After approving the deal, the Justice Department boasted that no other company had ever had to make greater concessions during an acquisition in the U.S. Bayer is being forced to divest itself of $9 billion in company assets, including most of its own seed business, in exchange for regulatory approval. And even if the name Monsanto disappears completely and only the Bayer name survives, as planned, the Americans will still have enormous influence on the new company due to the sheer power of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Bayer’s success will depend heavily on the goodwill of American politicians.

Economic Imperialism

But the field in which the United States showcases its economic imperialism more unabashedly than anywhere else is energy policy — particularly when it comes to the Russian natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.

The project has been in planning stages for close to two years. Under the leadership of energy giant Gazprom, Russia plans to lay two more undersea pipes to join the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline, which was laid several years ago. The project, in which the German companies Wintershall and Uniper are also investors, is expected to cost around 9.1 billion euros.

The pipeline has long been the subject of controversy. It is opposed by many Eastern European countries, including Poland and Ukraine, because they fear Russia will bypass them and cease pumping natural gas through overland lines, from which they earn billions of euros in transit fees. Others in the European Union, meanwhile, fear the second pipeline could result in an overdependence on Russian gas.

Ultimately, though, it is the Americans who have been most vocal in their objections. They view an energy partnership between Germany and Russia critically for geopolitical reasons. More importantly, though, they also want to supply Europe with liquified natural gas extracted through fracking in the United States. But that liquified gas is a lot more expensive than the Russian pipeline gas and Nord Stream 2 would make natural gas from the U.S. uncompetitive.

The Trump administration doesn’t appear to be prepared to accept such a state of affairs and is now using all means at its disposal to fight the energy project, including measures that are at the very limits of what is legally allowed, as Economics Minister Altmaier recently experienced.

Each year, the city of Aachen, Germany, awards the Charlemagne Prize for services rendered to the cause of European unification. On the sidelines of this year’s award ceremony, Altmaier, a member of Chancellor Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, spoke with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose country is one of the project’s leading opponents. Altmaier wanted to know under what conditions Poroshenko would be prepared to abandon his resistance to Nord Stream 2 and whether he, Altmaier, could mediate during in his planned visit to Russia.

Surprisingly, Poroshenko yielded. He said he needed a commitment that gas would continue to be pumped overland through Ukraine, despite the Baltic Sea pipeline. When Altmaier met a few days later with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, he was able to secure precisely that promise from the Russians. But it still didn’t move the pipeline forward: Poroshenko is said to have demanded further guarantees and concessions on the issue of Crimea.

Diplomatic Pressure, Intimidation, Sanctions

The Russians believe that the U.S. government was responsible behind the scenes for the shift in sentiment. Washington, after all, intensified its campaign against Nord Stream at the exact same time that Altmaier was in Russia. Sandra Oudkirk, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for energy diplomacy, first traveled to Ukraine to bring the government in Kiev into line, and then on to Berlin to harshly criticize Germany’s efforts to broker a solution. Oudkirk said the U.S. would oppose any German-Russian deal. She said the pipeline presents an acute danger for the U.S. and for Europe.

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell also got involved. He is even said to have raised his voice when speaking to Altmaier on the issue. The U.S., he is said to have blustered, will not accept Germany’s pipeline policy and the pipeline won’t be built.

The Americans have already indicated what they might do to prevent its construction. In addition to Wintershall and Uniper, the British-Dutch oil company Shell, the French utility company Engie and Austria’s OMV have also invested in the planned construction of the multi-billion-euro project. The Trump administration is threatening to impose tough sanctions on the companies if they don’t abandon the gas pipeline project. This would be a heavy blow for the firms, which are active internationally.

The Russians suspect that diplomatic pressure, intimidation and sanctions aren’t the only means being deployed by the Americans to prevent the pipeline’s construction. It’s also possible that compliant partners are being generously rewarded. In Denmark, for example, a country which accepted the construction of the Nord Stream 1 pipes through areas along the Danish coast in 2011 without opposition, project partners have observed a strange development.

In November, the Danish Parliament passed a rather surprising law which could prohibit the construction of Nord Stream 2 through Danish territorial waters. Since the passage of that legislation, the Danish government has postponed approval on a week by week basis. People inside the Nord Stream consortium believe they have identified the culprit for the change of heart. They argue that it isn’t based on the pretense that the pipeline will lead to a European overreliance on Russian gas. One internal email indicates that it has much more to do with tangible economic interests.

Quid Pro Quo?

The email notes that there has been a conspicuous and unusually strong increase in energy deals between Denmark and the U.S. since 2017. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion, the email says, that one hand is washing the other.

Specifically, the cooperation is focused on lucrative renewable energy deals. Danish Energy and Climate Minister Lars Lilleholt traveled to the U.S. in October together with representatives of Danish energy companies including Orsted and Danfoss. He met with the U.S. deputy secretary of energy, and with member of Congress. The official purpose of the trip was to expand cooperation with the U.S. in the field of renewable energies, and both sides reaffirmed there is great potential for offshore wind farms in particular.

It was a few weeks after that trip that Denmark passed the law that would make it possible to ban Nord Stream from their territorial waters. They then began expanding their energy partnership with the U.S. Cooperation agreements and orders for various wind parks followed at short intervals. Officials in Denmark and the U.S. claim there is no link between the law and the contracts, but the Russians believe the Americans have bought Denmark’s support.

The Trump administration has also reportedly signaled to the German government that abandoning the pipeline plans could be one way of preventing new tariffs on German goods. And this is how Trump’s industrial and trade policy dovetails: the pinpricks against foreign competitors, the undermining of major projects, the threats of tariffs against key industries and, ultimately, deals that link one with the other.

In the case of the Baltic Sea pipeline, the German government has made clear that a deal is out of the question. Still, the German government isn’t always that consistent in standing up against Trump. In the dispute over steel and aluminum tariffs, Altmaier sought to negotiate an exception right up to the very end, to the displeasure of the French, who had wanted to see a more combative European front against the Trump administration. It is only after Berlin’s attempts to curry favor with Washington failed that the EU has moved to impose punitive duties on bourbon whiskey and other American products, which are due to enter into force on July 1.

“Europe too seldom unites to defend its economic interests, so there is little to counter Trump,” criticizes fund manager Serra. “It’s mainly up to Germany to change that.”

Vladimir Putin operates in the shadows. The Russian president controls a clever disinformation campaign with the aim of upsetting the populations of Western countries, discrediting their institutions, dividing society, influencing elections and ultimately causing the collapse of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, there are still many people who continue to believe that Putin is innocent and that the claims are merely the malicious fabrications of Western intelligence agencies. Is it all just a conspiracy theory?

Regarding Donald Trump’s intentions, by contrast, there can no longer be any doubt. Since taking office, he has carried out a scorched-earth policy against multi-lateral treaties of all kinds. He is a man with no interest in foreign policy, seeing it merely as an instrument to pursue his “America First” ideology. He views cooperation as a weakness, the latest proof being the US withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Trump acts quite openly. And now, the American president has turned his attentions toward launching a disinformation campaign against Germany. He is doing so as a way of justifying his morally repugnant refugee policies to the American people.

The heartbreaking scenes at the southern U.S. border, where crying children are brutally separated from their parents for having committed the error of seeking a better life for themselves and their families in the U.S. is heaping pressure on even the most diehard Trump supporters. This zero-tolerance policy turned into a PR disaster, one that Trump now wants to contain by grasping at whatever straws he can – including attacks on Germany.

INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER

Sign up for our newsletter — and get the very best of SPIEGEL in English sent to your email inbox twice weekly.

In an unprecedented step into German domestic affairs, the U.S. president seized on the current disagreements within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition about refugee policy. The German people were “turning against their leadership,” he tweeted gleefully, and followed that up with a blatant lie, saying “crime in Germany is way up.” Europe, he intimated, had made the big mistake of letting in millions of people who had “violently” changed the culture.

Apart from the fact that this is all lies, the author is a man who bears more responsibility than any other for the ongoing, brutal attempts to rip down all that has beenlaboriously built up since World War II.

In a second tweet, Trump then repeated his lie about rising crime rates in Germany and said that “officials do not want to report these crimes.” It reads like a speech that could be held at a right-wing extremist rally in Dresden.

The world has become worn down by Trump’s bluster and used to his constant stream of lunacy. But this numbness shouldn’t lead to the normalization and acceptance of his aggressive outrageousness. The claim – leveled without a shred of proof – that the German government and its officials would deliberately keep the true extent of criminality from the citizens of Germany should not go without consequences. His open support for German right-wing populists is nothing less than a blatant attack by a foreign power on this country’s government. It is a direct attempt by the White House to destabilize the Federal Republic of Germany.

Angela Merkel has been far too restrained in her reaction to this threat. The chancellor simply responded that the crime figures recently presented by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer speak for themselves. Those statistics show that crime has in fact gone down slightly. And if there is one person in German politics who could never be accused of whitewashing crime statistics, it is Seefhofer, who is currently looking for any excuse possible to take an even harder line on migration.

No, this U.S. president was never a partner. He is a hostile opponent. We should finally start to treat him as such and act accordingly. Summoning the U.S. ambassador for a formal protest would be a good first step. Furthermore, relations to this U.S. government should be reduced to a bare minimum. It is also no longer necessary to pretend to be on friendly terms. Germany and the European Union should abandon polite self-restraint when dealing publicly with Trump and his government. We can’t completely cut off the channels of communication, but they should be used sparingly.

We have long known that we could no longer rely on the United States under Donald Trump. Now, though, it has become clear that we have to protect ourselves from him.

The deputy head of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party claimed on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump was better informed about German crime rates than Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Georg Pazderski, who is known for his incendiary comments about refugees, said Trump “is clearly better informed than the German government about crime in Germany with the help of his intelligence agencies.”

“When crimes such as theft, drug dealing and sexual assault are not reported or only to a very small degree because the victims are ashamed, then those crimes do not become part of the statistics,” Pazderski said in Berlin.

“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” he tweeted Monday. “Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Donald Trump, a political … this so that this conflict does not become a war,” she told German lawmakers. … by US intelligence agencies of meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

(CNN) President Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care what anyone thinks about … in defiance of the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies. …. Putin’s company to that of allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and …

The Russian public’s trust in President Vladimir Putin has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in five years, according to a survey by an independent research body.

The results come as popular discontent grows over a planned pension reform that would set the retirement age past the life expectancy of some Russians. Thousands across the country have taken to the streets to protest the reform.

On Tuesday, a poll from the independent Levada Center showed a 12-point drop in trust levels toward Putin, down from 60 percent in January to 48 percent in June.

The poll asked respondents to name politicians whom they trust.

The pollster last registered a dip below 50 percent in Putin’s ratings in 2012 and 2013. In 2012, the year Putin was elected to his third term as president, his rating was at 37 percent.

Putin’s average trust rating stands at 56.5 percent, with the Levada Center documenting trust in Putin hitting a peak of 64 percent over the past four years.

Respondents in June’s Levada poll named Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as the politician they distrust the most. Trust in Medvedev, who made the controversial announcement of Russia’s plans to raise the retirement age while public attention was focused on the opening of the football World Cup on June 14, was at 9 percent.

The Levada survey was carried out between June 22 and June 26 among 1,600 people in 52 Russian regions.

Other polls have found similar levels of falling trust in the Russian president.

The state-run VTsIOM pollster reported that trust in Putin dropped by nearly 10 percentage points from June 3 (45.7 percent) to June 24 (38.3 percent)

VTsIOM last saw Putin’s trust levels fall below 50 percent in April, from a high of 58.9 percent in January.

“The “Moral Black Hole” of the “Times Square”. “Happy New Year!” – Is this the message?

High Profile, “Top Stories”, Performance Crimes are the crimes of publicity; conceived, planned and committed with the aim of broadcasting the public message (“propaganda”), on the overt to the covert spectrum, and impressing it upon public imagination and emotions skillfully, as a type of the performance art. The level of sophistication and preparations in this type of crimes indicate the possible involvement of the highly skilled and experienced groups, armed with the top-notch digital technologies, and the list of the hypothetical culprits might range broadly, from the organized crime groups to the various intelligence services. M.N. – 1.19.18

Are these the words of your prophets? Or the messages from some mysterious and powerful “Joker“, or the tools and weapons of the “hybrid wars”? Are we the “Labrat Knats” on a burning “GHOST SHIP” America? Did we become just the massive supply of lab rats, lab knats – drosophilas, the human Guinea pigs, bred as the unwitting subjects for the various experiments, on and off-line, conducted by the various hostile actors?

Who is The Joker? Is this Putin, or some known or unknown to us chief in some intelligence service? Are these the non-state actors? Who are they?

SEMANTIC ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATIONS

In my humble opinion, many of the recent “accidents” appear to contain some implied symbolic meanings and the symbolic “messages”. Is this the correct assessment or just the subjective, maybe even the paranoid impression? These meanings, messages, and “clues” are too visible (at least for the cued observers), too much the parts of the accidents, and too evident and even obvious, to ignore and to dismiss them; they are so by the designs of their “authors” who intend to broadcast their messages to those who are able to read them.

The “proof is in the pudding”: the various “telling parts” of the “narratives” in the various “accidents” are “internally consistent” in their compositions to tell the “story” with a certain meaning, comprising a “message”. The “stories” were also “externally” congruent with the social and political situations at a time. The things appear to be what they look like or claim to be, “prima facie”, according to a sort of “duck principle”, without implying their genesis or origin. However, this issue of “proof” is more complex than it sounds.

These “messages” may be visual, as in the graffiti signs: “LABRAT KNATS” and “GHOST SHIP”, which serve as the backdrops for the crime scenes. Or the “messages” might be in the storylines, actions, plot, drama, and the scenes of the “accidents”, as in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, which looked like the human sacrifice in front of the Luxor Sphinx. Or in the disguised verbal-linguistic associations and allusions, usually in the names of the perpetrators, officials, or victims, and/or the places of the crime scenes, or in some other, similar clues, as in the “FARWEST Side of the LOWER” Manhattan truck attack of 10.31.17. Usually, these three components: the visuals, the dramatic actions, and the verbal allusions, are all present and mixed in various degrees. The place and the scene of Las Vegas shooting would have a quality of the mass spectacle, had it not been so real, and the similar notions of “the crimes for a show” apply to the other “accidents”. And these “shows” very often carry the symbolic meanings, a moral, a story to tell, or some other didactic content, which in one word can be called the “message”.

MESSAGE CRIMES AND THEIR FEATURES

Many other previous “accident” episodes do fit this structural pattern of the “message crimes” also. The opinions about any particular interpretations might differ, but the overall meanings or the “messages” of the “accidents” should not be that difficult to grasp. These “accidents” may be viewed as the “performance crimes or acts”, conceptually within the realm of the “Performance Arts”.

These “message crimes” are committed largely for the sake of broadcasting the message, with the purposes of intimidating, warning, “punishing”, “propaganda”, etc. These types of the public and social messaging were used quite often throughout the human history and were retained in the religious myths.

“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin: numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided”, said the “writing on the wall“, or in other words, the issue was analyzed, understood, prognosticated, and decided. In our days, the mobility and the ubiquity of the “social media walls” are combined with their traditional, although digital, monumentalism.

Any crime is a message and a sick one, but the “crimes as performance acts” and as “the messages” proper, have their own distinct features. These are the crimes for the show and documentation in all forms and media, designed to be performed with flair and panache; as in a movie, drama, story, picture, graffiti, or like in a dream; with the aims of reaching the broadest and the most susceptible audiences. The broad and intense media coverage is the organic feature of these “messages”; direct and/or indirect media manipulations and influencing are also possible. The use of these “accidents” as the communication tools, subject to interpretations, within the large and disparate criminal groups, is also a possibility. The conceptualization of the “crimes for the sake of broadcasting the message” and elaboration of their typology might be helpful for their investigations by generating new hypotheses, leads, ideas, and understanding, and the “correct” or at least adequate interpretation of the “message of the crime” might be the key to analysis.